Aboriginals


The aboriginals we saw all through Australia made a big impact on me, I wanted to write a bit about them. 


The largest Aboriginal people today is the Pitjantjatjara who live in the area around Uluru (Ayers Rock) and south into the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara in South Australia, while the second largest Aboriginal community are the Arrernte people who live in and around Alice Springs. The third largest are the Luritja, who live in the lands between the two largest just mentioned. The Aboriginal languages with the largest number of speakers today are the Pitjantjatjara, Warlpiri and Arrernte.

Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands, and these peoples' descendants. Indigenous Australians are distinguished as either Aboriginal people or Torres Strait Islanders, who currently together make up about 2.6% of Australia's population.


There is no clear or accepted origin of the indigenous people of Australia. Although they migrated to Australia through Southeast Asia they are not demonstrably related to any known Asian or Polynesian population. There is evidence of genetic and linguistic interchange between Australians in the far north and the Austronesian peoples of modern-day New Guinea and the islands, but this may be the result of recent trade and intermarriage.  


The Stolen Generation:   Between 1910-1970 an attempt by government to lift Aboriginal children out of poverty and disadvantage by physically distancing them from their families and communities.  As many as 100,000, or 1/3 of the Aboriginal children were taken from their parents and sent to foster homes or state training centres.  The idea--thought quite advanced at the time--was to prepare them for a  more rewarding life in the white world.  What was most amazing about this was the legal mechanism that enabled it to be done.  Until the 1960s in most Australian states, Aboriginal parents did not have legal custody of their own children.  The state did.  The state could take children from their homes at any time, on any basis it deemed appropriate, without apology or explanation.  They did everything they could to eliminate contact between the parents and children.  Parents had no way of keeping in touch with them, no way of knowing where they were.  This went on for decades.  They didn't see it as heartless.  They thought they were doing a good thing.  Their believe was:  No matter how frantic their momentary grief might be at the time, they soon would forget their offspring, they sincerely believed that indigenous people were somehow immune to normal human emotions. Very often the children were told that their parents were dead, or that the parents no longer wanted them.  Grief-related alcoholism and catastrophic levels of suicide was the result.  The children,  meanwhile were kept in care until they were sixteen or seventeen and then turned out into the community.  They then had the choice of staying in the city or returning to their communities which they barely remembered.  Dysfunction and dislocation was bred into the system.  This practice has been stopped, but that doesn't mean that all that damage is going to be magically undone.   


  It would not be fair to blame the Stolen Generations policy for every ill currently being suffered by the indigenous people.  One of the things we need to remember is that there was very little regard for Australian Aborigines as a race.  Native Americans were recognised as quite sophisticated in many ways, whereas most Aboriginal people were still Stone Age. Education was seen as a waste of effort, hence the focus on 'saving' the half-castes, who might still be salvaged, and the general neglect of the full-blood Aborigines.


A very high proportion of the Aborigines we saw looked poverty stricken.  They can withstand all the reverses of nature, fiendish droughts and sweeping floods, horrors of thirst and enforced starvation--but he cannot withstand civilization.   For virtually every indicator of prosperity and well-being, hospitalization rates, suicide rates, childhood mortality, imprisonment, employment,  the figures for Aborigines range from twice as bad to up to twenty times worse than for the general population.  Life expectancy is 20 years less than that of the average white Australian. They are Australia's greatest social failing.  Alcohol was largely responsible for the abuse of children, and the government pledged to find ways to limit the ability of indigenous Australians to drink so much.  In 2007 under income management, all Aboriginals in the Northern Territory had to spend half their pensions or welfare cheques on necessities in a government-approved store.  None of this has made any difference at all to the statistics. 


Over the past 20 yrs, successive governments have done quite a lot--or quite a lot compare with what was done before.  Spent more money on schools and clinics, community projects, helping small business get started, and restoring land to Aboriginal communities.   


Today, Australia’s 500,000 indigenous people make up about 2 per cent of the population. Life expectancy for Aboriginals is about 17 years lower than for non-indigenous Australians. In some parts of the country, Aboriginal men are 25 times more likely to be incarcerated as whites.  Years after government interventions, child malnutrition levels remain well below the country's national average. 


What should be done to spread the fruits of general Australian prosperity to those who are unable to find their way to it?  "Do more.  Try harder.  Start now."